In the photographic film processing industry, a very successfully implemented practice exists in which a customer, who wishes to have film processed and turned into prints, picks up a special envelope packet, either from the display rack or counter at the retail location, such as a grocery store, drug store or film processor's kiosk, or from among the coupons and advertisements received in a direct mailing or as a newspaper insert.
The typical film-processing envelope packet now in use has a portrait orientation (is taller than wide, and printed with text lines extending widthwise of the envelope). On a typical packet, expansion gables extend along both long sides, one short side is closed (typically by a doubling over of the web stock of which the packet is made) and the other short side (i.e., the top end) is tentatively closed by a folded-over integral flap, a lower-end extension of which is separable along a transverse line of weakness to provide a claim check (receipt).
Typically, the underside of the flap and the rear main panel of the envelope body at a confrontingly corresponding location are provided with transversally extending bands (patches) of adhesive. The adhesive typically used is a latex-based resealable adhesive which needs no moistening. However, it is one which has a relatively short tack life, so that, with a month or so, depending on temperature and humidity, its ability to stick to itself is largely gone. It no longer behaves like rubber cement, but more like a nonskid floor surface coating.
Typically, the front and rear main panels of the envelope, and both surfaces of the closure flap and claim check are printed with text and graphics, most often in at least two colors, and frequently in three or four colors or full color. Much of the text and graphics instructs the customer how to use the product, what their expectations should be and provides spaces for the customer to communicate needed information to the store and/or to the processor, and vice versa. Typical information requested from the customer via blanks on the envelope are customer name and contact information, date of drop off; brand, type and number of exposures of film, or negative number and quantity (or size and quantity) of reprints or enlargements of negatives desired, how many prints of each negative are desired, size, special instructions, acceptance of special deal terms, and the like. Typically, both the envelope (e.g., on the flap) and the claim check include a statement of limitation of liability of the store and processor. Also typically, a unique number for each packet is imprinted at least once on the envelope, and on the claim check. For instance, it may be printed on the outside surface of the claim check, on the front main panel of the envelope and as a machine-readable (e.g., U.P.C.) bar code at the base of the front main panel of the envelope (at a location where the envelope is two layers thick, these layers being the front and rear main panels of the envelope body).
Although most of the printing on the conventional film-processing envelope packet occurs on what was the same one surface of the continuous web stock from which the packet was made, some printing (e.g., the repeated statement of limitation of liability) may occur, typically in one color, on the rear surfaces of the flap and claim check (and, therefore, on what was the opposite surface of the web stock).
Typically, some die cutting is involved in manufacture of the conventional film-processing envelope, not only to sever the blank for one envelope from the continuous web, and to provide the perforated line of weakness along which the claim check is to be severed by the customer from the flap, but also to reduce the amount of sheet material disposed at the "inside of the elbow" in the gables where the web stock is doubled over at the lower end of the envelope. However, typically, the flap and claim check are as wide as each main panel of the envelope (some web stock material which corresponds to the gable widths being cut away from the region of the web stock which produces the combined flap and claim check). Some of each gable is integral with the front main panel, and the remainder with the rear main panel, these portions of each gable being permanently glued together during packet manufacture. In the manufacturing process, the lengthwise direction of the continuous web corresponds to the widthwise direction of the individual packets that are being produced. Machinery for producing such packets is commercially available. Although the packets are more commonly made from paper, they can be made from paper substitutes such as Tyvek bonded nonwoven polyolefin web stock.
The customer, who has picked up a packet, completes the blanks, places their undeveloped film, or their negatives to be printed in the single pocket, seals the envelope, tears off the claim check and deposits the filled envelope in the slot of a pick-up station or with the clerk at a service center in the store or at the kiosk, retaining the uniquely numbered claim check.
On its way to, at and from the film processing location, the customer's order is kept track of using the unique number as bar coded near the lower margin on the front panel of the envelope.
At the film processing location, the physical elements which are going back to the customer, typically the negatives and the prints conventionally are placed in respective pockets of a two-pocketed return envelope. This envelope typically is manufactured from two continuous webs, one of which is wider than the other. The wider one is provided with a succession of transverse glue strips near one longitudinal edge and doubled over on itself with the narrower web captured between its layers and thereby becoming united to the wider web by the glue strips. The wider web is also folded along a longitudinal line to provide a flap which, when folded down, covers the mouths of the two resulting pockets on each return envelope, the individual return envelopes being created by severing the web transversally intermediate each glue strip, so that a respective half of each glue strip is located at each end of each envelope.
The return envelope, with its contents in its pockets, is placed bodily in the same uniquely numbered envelope that the customer had used for sending in the photographic materials for processing, resealed using the latex-based resealable adhesive on the flap and rear main panel, and returned to the location at which the customer is intended to pick up and pay for the film processing work.
It is a measure of the success of the foregoing procedure, that the volume of envelopes used has become so great, that it has become a matter of concern that avoidable waste is involved by the use of two envelopes for each transactional cycle.
The present inventor has rethought the foregoing procedure, in order to devise a modification which is acceptable at each stage, but eliminates one of the envelopes by redesigning the other (and its manufacturing process).